Monday, January 10, 2011

Kaddish for Debbie

Baruch Dayan Emet

The word went out last night, Debbie Friedman is dead. Dead at age 59 of pneumonia. And we are all grieving. Friedman was singer, musician and a songwriter who made an indelible imprint on liberal, particularly Reform, Jewish liturgy.

In the year 2011, with her revolution well won and her signature sound anchored so deeply in a time past (1970's and 80's folk pop), it's easy to forget how radical a presence she was. She's possibly overshadowed only by Shlomo Carlebach as the most important Jewish liturgical composer of the 20th century. She was pivotal in the translation of the Reform camp liturgy into a synagogue form and in the defining of the 'songleader' cantorial style. She carved out a space not just for a woman's participation in Jewish prayer, but created a body of work that placed woman's experience, in both Torah and contemporary life, as central to the prayer experience.

About Teruah-JewishMusic

I'm a Conservative Jew living in a Christian farm town in Michigan, USA. For me, Jewish music used to be Adon Olam, Hava Nagila, and Fiddler on the Roof. I started getting a clue a few years ago. Jewish music is Klezmer dances, Sephardic ballads and Chassidic niggun. It's thousand year old hymns, three hundred year old Shabbat table songs and 60 year old partisan resistance songs. It's contemporary hip-hop, punk rock, electronica, jazz, and chamber music. In addition to loving its musical and spiritual qualities, Jewish music helps me connect my family with a much broader and diverse Jewish culture than is available locally. The Teruah blog helps me document my exploration and share it with others. Why the name Teruah? Teruah is a call on the shofar on Rosh Hashanna.